Posts Tagged ‘NFL’

I would like to preface this by saying that I love women and everything that comes with women being women. With that being said I have questions, these questions have plagued me a bit over the last year and a half or so and I feel this is my platform to address them. I got into a small debate with my cousin about domestic violence last week. I feel it is wrong to put your hands on a woman, I also find it wrong for a woman to put her hands on a man. His argument was a valid one, basically at the end of the day when a woman puts her hands on a man if she is striking him her blows won’t land with the force his will and in the end not impact his way of life-like his would her, and to that I agree. My side was this, women go into their physical assault knowing the guy is bigger and stronger, she knows if he hits back its going to hurt. Her position is that is he isn’t willing to risk the consequences of putting his hands on her because these consequences are severe in nature. What you must know is that a mans name being associated with abuse or rape basically ends it for him, true or not. My thing is shouldn’t she face some penalty? Now when I address this point in social media they say I am victim blaming. My argument is, if she starts it,, hits him and he defends himself aren’t they both victims? I tie of media acting as if every case of domestic violence is a woman sitting by a fire and a man comes in and goes upside her head for no reason, Does that happen YES. In the Ray Rice incident the prosecutor declined to file charges against her probably because of how horrid the video was, I agree. What about the cases that are less clean cut and more murky? Like I feel Solange should have gotten an assault charge for the Jayz elevator incident.

Before I introduce this next point let me add some context to it. Ray Rice is a young African-American man with only a single known incident of anything law breaking in his time in the NFL or before.

Because of Ray Rice the NFL enacted a mandatory 6 game suspension for 1st offenders of domestic violence, they hired women group advocates as well to help in an advisory role.

Recently Josh Brown of the New York Giants a close to 40yr old white kicker, had incidents of domestic violence brought public. Mind you with these incidents knowledge of the team they had no problem giving him another contract knowing he was facing suspension.

He was banned 1 game for violating the NFL personal conduct policy.

After the incident came to light the NFL which a multi billion dollar corp claimed they couldn’t get any information on the previous claims. These claims were in his divorce documents which are public knowledge AND a the previous Pro Bowl the NFL security had to move his family because of him, yet they claim to know nothing, in addition before the season started he went to ownership of the New York Giants and alerted them to the fact his abused his wife on multiple occasions. NO one bats in eye for an aging kicker. This past week the diary, emails, etc where he claims to have done it multiple times came to light and again no one bats an eyes and they were fully willing to let him play in the game in London.

Now the New York Giants claimed he showed a level of contrition and they were concerned about how his family was going to eat as hey depending on his salary. No one gave a dam about Ray Rice’s toddler daughter and family at the time and still don’t, no one has offered to bring him in for a try out. Mind you Ray Rice hid nothing was very public, went to appropriate counseling, and even a step further to a support group, talks to youth about the pitfalls, and advocates for domestic violence causes. He even decided that if he was picked up he would donate his salary to domestic violence charities. He is still young enough to make a difference and he can;t get a single call. His family that now has a second child needs to eat as well. There is a level of fairness that needs to happen here. They slander that man all over the place for half a year and made him toxic and didn’t consider his family and he cooperated fully. There is a problem and it needs to be rooted in fairness.